Miami

Two children die in overpass crash

Two children flung from a sport utility vehicle in a crash fell 60 feet from an overpass to their deaths on the street below Monday, state troopers said.

Two other people traveling in the SUV were critically injured in the wreck on Interstate 95 in downtown Miami, troopers said.

The children, ages 6 and 11, died where they landed, said Lt. Julio Pajon of the Florida Highway Patrol. One struck a traffic signal at the intersection below before hitting the pavement.

Pajon said their mother and a 10-year-old girl were hospitalized in critical condition. They were also thrown from the Chevy Suburban but remained on the roadway.

None was wearing a seat belt, troopers said.

The driver of the other vehicle was not hurt.

Alaska

Census to plumb Arctic Ocean depths

Scientists will venture into the field next month to conduct the first census of the Arctic Ocean, including an ice-lidded, 3,800-meter-deep bowl of water the size of Alaska. The project will cost $10 million to $20 million, and is an effort to identify species that could be affected by global warming. It is due to be finished by 2010.

Russ Hopcroft, an assistant professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who is helping oversee the study, said the international group will explore everything from the sea ice community to invertebrates on the ocean floor.

“There’s an urgency to know what’s there before we lose it,” Hopcroft said. He said the Arctic may have already lost 40 percent of its permanent ice pack because of the rise in Earth’s temperature.

Many species that live in the depths of the Canada Basin that researchers will focus on do not travel to shallower waters and are believed to have been isolated for millions of years. Scientists hope to discover living fossils, species that were thought to have gone extinct but may have survived undetected in the Arctic.

Washington, D.C.

Scientists see evidence avian flu evolving

Scientists in China have disturbing news about a strain of the flu virus circulating among ducks in Asia — the virus is getting progressively more lethal to mammals.

Hualan Chen of the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute and colleagues isolated 22 samples of the H5N1 influenza virus from ducks in mainland China from 1999 through 2002 and then injected strains of the virus from various years into chickens, mice and ducks.

None of the strains made ducks sick. But most of the strains were highly dangerous to the chickens. And in mice, the virus became progressively more lethal over time, with samples isolated in 1999 and 2000 significantly less deadly than those isolated in 2001 and 2002.

After analyzing the genetics of the viruses, the researchers concluded that the virus had mutated over time to become more lethal.

The research is alarming, because the virus jumped to people in Hong Kong in 1997, causing six deaths.

Washington, D.C.

Cheney doctor dropped from team

One of Vice President Dick Cheney’s physicians, for years a prominent spokesman on the vice president’s health, has been dropped from his medical team and is battling an addiction to prescription drugs.

The doctor, internist Gary Malakoff, was relieved last month as chairman of George Washington University Medical Center’s general internal medicine division, the New Yorker magazine reports in its current issue. The magazine reports that Malakoff was battling an addiction to prescription drugs in 2000, at the same time he treated Cheney for the most recent of his four heart attacks and then declared the vice president “up to the task of the most sensitive public office.”

According to the New Yorker, Malakoff has been enrolled since 1999 in a drug treatment program run by the Medical Society of the District of Columbia. The society determined recently that Malakoff was not fit to see patients, and he was put on leave until September, the magazine reports.